STORIES OF PRACTICE
My learning from my practice with adolescents has not proceeded smoothly, but in episodes. A series of workshops with an especially challenging and perceptive group of young people; a project which went further than I ever thought it could; a sticking point which necessitated critical reflection and a change of tack. In retrospect these take shape as ‘stories of practice’, detaching themselves from the mass of experience to become personal totems of conceptual realisation.
Robin Nelson draws on Lev Vygotsky’s thinking to suggest that in learning, ‘Spontaneous concepts, in working their way ‘upward’ toward greater abstractness, clear a path for scientific concepts in their ‘downward’ development towards greater concreteness’ (2013:62). Whereas my exegesis brings together my framework of conceptualisations of my work, and reaches downwards towards encounters with young people to illuminate it, these stories make the opposite journey. They chart the origins of the ‘spontaneous concepts’ in real moments of situated practice, and reach upward to theory in places.
Thus in these stories you will see in action the elements of my participatory practice first hinted at in my Manifesto: harnessing the potential of the encounter between young people and storyteller in the territory of a story, and the traces it leaves behind. To follow my train of thought, follow my suggested route through the stories, which mirrors the structure of my Exegesis.
At the same time these stories of practice prevent any neat or uniform picture from emerging from my research. They make space for ideas which cannot be adequately explored in my exegesis, and occasionally 'disprove' the very principles I lay out in it. Perhaps what this shows is that every research output is, in itself, a story.
Reference: Nelson, Robin (2013) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Robin Nelson draws on Lev Vygotsky’s thinking to suggest that in learning, ‘Spontaneous concepts, in working their way ‘upward’ toward greater abstractness, clear a path for scientific concepts in their ‘downward’ development towards greater concreteness’ (2013:62). Whereas my exegesis brings together my framework of conceptualisations of my work, and reaches downwards towards encounters with young people to illuminate it, these stories make the opposite journey. They chart the origins of the ‘spontaneous concepts’ in real moments of situated practice, and reach upward to theory in places.
Thus in these stories you will see in action the elements of my participatory practice first hinted at in my Manifesto: harnessing the potential of the encounter between young people and storyteller in the territory of a story, and the traces it leaves behind. To follow my train of thought, follow my suggested route through the stories, which mirrors the structure of my Exegesis.
At the same time these stories of practice prevent any neat or uniform picture from emerging from my research. They make space for ideas which cannot be adequately explored in my exegesis, and occasionally 'disprove' the very principles I lay out in it. Perhaps what this shows is that every research output is, in itself, a story.
Reference: Nelson, Robin (2013) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.